Journalist arrested for interviewing reported rape victim

Nairobi, January 11,
2013--Somali authorities should immediately release a freelance
journalist who has been in custody in Mogadishu since Thursday for interviewing
a woman who claimed she was raped by government soldiers, the Committee to
Protect Journalists said today.

Abdiaziz Abdinuur,
who is also known as "Koronto," has reported for several local and
international news outlets, including Dalsan Radio, Badri
Media Productions, Radio Ergo, and the U.K.-based Daily
Telegraph. He was summoned on Thursday to the Central Investigations
Department (CID) in the capital for questioning in connection with his January 8 interview with an internally displaced woman who has claimed that she was
raped by several soldiers last year, according to news reports and local
journalists who spoke to Abdiaziz. No warrant was issued for the journalist's arrest,
and no charges have been filed against him, the sources said.

The woman has claimed that she was raped by Somali soldiers while
living in a camp for internally displaced persons in Mogadishu in December,
according to news reports. On January 6, Al-Jazeera English published a story
of government soldiers raping internally displaced women in Mogadishu camps. It
is unclear if the woman mentioned in the Al-Jazeera story is the woman whom
Abdiaziz interviewed, but local journalists said the Al-Jazeera report is what
led to police looking for the source of the allegations.

Police also summoned for questioning Omar Faruk, a correspondent for
the Al-Jazeera Arabic Service in Somalia, but released him after he said he had
no connection with the Al-Jazeera English report.

CID Chief Abdullahi
Hassan interrogated the reported victim early Thursday, demanding that she give
them contact information for any journalists who interviewed her, and then used
her phone to contact Abdiaziz, according to news
reports. Police also
arrested the woman, but released her on Thursday on the condition that she
return today for further questioning.

Abdiaziz told police that he had interviewed the reported victim, but
had not published the story, according to local journalists and news reports.
Police searched his home and confiscated his laptop, digital recorder, and cellphone,
local journalists said.

Authorities did not
immediately disclose their reason for detaining and interrogating a person who
reported a crime and the individuals to whom she reported it. Repeated calls to the information minister
and deputy information minister were not answered.

"It is shameful
that Somali authorities have arrested a woman who has reported a rape, and a
reporter who documented her story, instead of conducting an investigation into
this reported crime," said CPJ East Africa Consultant Tom Rhodes. "There is
absolutely no reason Abdulaziz Abdinuur
should be in custody. He should be released immediately and his personal
property returned."